If you’ve been reading for any length of time, you know all about my dear friend Sally from London. We met on a message board nearly a decade ago, met in person six years ago, blah blah blah, one of my favorite people in the world. Her sister lives in the Detroit area, so when Sally visits her every year or so, I go to Detroit, which means I spend a lot of time traveling between two of America’s most dangerous cities.

Last time I saw my dear friend Sal, we converged on Detroit with our then-two-year-olds two years ago. What the hell were we thinking? While it was wonderful to spend time with Sally, my main memory of that trip involves chasing toddlers and having panic attacks.

This time, the kids stayed home. This is also the first time in many years that Sally and I have gotten to see each other without one of us being knocked up. We can drink together! Get dressed up, go to grown-up places, and stay out as late as we want! We can go to nice shops, or hang out at coffeehouses and talk for hours! Sweet, blissful grown-up time – how we’ve missed you!

The thing is, when you get two exhausted moms together (including a mom of two – Sally was pregnant with her second boy last time we saw each other), they may talk a good game, but there’s a good chance they’re going to wind up spending those days barefoot on a couch.

Actually, we did a lot more than just hang out on the couch, although that part of the trip was awesome. Hanging out on the couch includes lots of gossip, watching of chick flicks, and eating Chinese food from Peking House or pizza and bread from Buddy’s.

Oh, I shouldn’t have mentioned Buddy’s. I’m hungry and now I really want some of those squishy, garlicky breadsticks.

Anyway. I flew to Detroit at the asscrack of dawn on Sunday. I’d intended to leave at the civilized time of 10:00 AM, but the airline decided otherwise. I’d like to blame the airline for the fact that, in my groggy pre-6:00 AM state, I did something that probably landed me on the no-fly list.

For the second flight in a row, I tried to clear security with metal barrettes in my hair, only to forget I was wearing the barrettes, thus forcing me to fail the metal detector test twice and endure the feel-copping pat-down only to say five seconds into it that, oh yeah, I’m a barrette-wearing, moronic threat to national security. Please, touch my butt in front of all my flight companions.

Sally and some friends spent the weekend at a cabin, getting tattoos and enraging people. I highly approve. The tattoo’s lovely. I got to Detroit before she got back, so I grabbed my rental car (love the new VW Rabbit) and took off to do something I’ve never done on my many trips to Detroit – a little solo exploring!

Let me say, I do love taking off by myself into areas unknown and exploring. I’m not quite as nuts about it as I used to be, when I was in my early 20s and I would turn up in an unfamiliar city, mapless and ready to go. I did take a map from the rental car place. I’d also done a little pre-planning on possible things to do in my rare solo time – record stores, yarn shops, and such. First priority – hunger. I hadn’t eaten since the night before and I had my brain completely emerged in thoughts of The Fly Trap.

And it was good. Cheddar biscuits with creamy onion gravy, home fries, and eggs over easy with about 20 cups of really awesome diner coffee. I made friends with the guy sitting next to me at the counter; we talked about Detroit’s music scene.

Sally called while I was making friends and stuffing my face to tell me she was back from the cabin, so I high-tailed it to her sister’s house, getting hopelessly lost less than five blocks from her house. But that was okay! No schedule means getting lost isn’t a bad thing. I was antsy to see Sal, though. We had couch-sitting, gossiping and chick-flick-watching to do. And that’s what we did. Sally wanted to eat Chinese carry-out from the little white boxes like she’s seen on American TV shows while we watched “27 Dresses” and damn if it wasn’t just about as fun as it gets.

Monday brought a good lay-in (is that what the Brits call it when you stay in bed way too late?) before I went met up with Sally and her sister Kirsti for an afternoon playing in downtown Royal Oak. This is another thing we haven’t had a chance to do in the past – there’s usually so much stuff planned and so many people that we haven’t gotten to explore the local terrain.

First we paid a visit to the post office where the first big disgruntled postal employee massacre happened. Not to site-see, but because Sally had stuff to mail. Still, it was creepy. Then we ventured into the rain for lunch at Pronto for fried stuff, sandwiches and mac and cheese. We opted to pass on the gorgeous pastries because Royal Oak is apparently gorgeous pastry Mecca with a bazillion bakery options.

After having ice cream, we went to the award-winning Astoria Pastry Shop. Oh, the beauty! Such gorgeous pastries, cupcakes, cannolis, cookies, and cakes. And for what might be the first time in my life, I was far too full for any of it to look good. I considered buying something to have later, when I knew I’d be regretting not buying a cupcake the size of my head with a bouffant of frosting. I just couldn’t do it, and I settled for a Diet Vernor’s Ginger Ale. Sally bought a German chocolate brownie, and Kirsti bought a cannoli and a gorgeous red velvet cupcake, because Sally had never tried either. Don’t they look like happy people with pastries? Wouldn’t you be?

Minutes after snapping this photo, they unwrapped the red velvet cupcake and indulged in its sumptuousness. Being the only one at the table intimately familiar with red velvet cake (it’s one of my favorites), Kirsti asked me to have a sample and tell them if it was an adequate representation of a red velvet cake. As I chewed, nodding that it was, indeed, a fine representation of this particular cake genre, I noticed something on the cake. Something less than an inch long. I gave it a tug and holy God, it’s the tip of a giant hair iceberg!

I pulled and pulled, and from inside the cake uncoiled a long, black, curly hair. Seeing as our table had a blonde, a redhead, and a fading and graying light brunette – and that none of us had baked the cake – it obviously was the bakery’s fault.

Here’s where Americans differ from Brits. Kirsti returned the cupcake to the register and was out of my earshot. It wasn’t until we were home a few hours later that I learned what transpired: Kirsti presented the cupcake and the hair, very politely apologized for the inconvenience but there’s a hair in our cake. The employee blamed their other bakery location and offered Kirsti another hairy cupcake. Not a refund. Another hairy cupcake. Kirsti politely declined and returned to the table.

During a trip to visit Sally in Detroit in 2004, I managed to get a $300 restaurant bill wiped clean because of horrible service. I didn’t even have to threaten anyone with my steak knife, which is a good thing because my grossly overcooked tuna steak had dulled it beyond usefulness. That’s because Americans are mean and Brits are nice.

But because of that niceness, Kirsti, who’s also a knitter, took me to her favorite yarn shop, Ewe-nique Knits. Wonderful place that has fiber arts summer camps for kids ages four and up. Take note St. Louis yarn shop people! I’d pay for that! For the past year or so, I’ve started buying special yarns when I travel as my primary souvenir. This time the yarn I bought was perfectly hairy. Rabbit hair in yarn that will eventually be a scarf wrapped around my mouth? Acceptable. Baker hair in a cupcake I put inside my mouth? Never acceptable. It’s that simple.

There was a trip to Target, which involved Sally becoming the third person I know to purchase the silver glittery Converse One-Stars. If anyone in this world needed those shoes, it’s Sal. Post-Target, we headed back to Kirsti’s, where our pal Tiffy arrived for pizza from Buddy’s . I don’t think Sal believed me when I told her that she couldn’t get sweet corn on her pizza because I find it morally reprehensible, but because pizza places in America don’t have sweet corn. At all. Ever.

We also watched episodes of “Basil Brush”, a British kids show on which Sally has appeared twice. Unfortunately, her performances as Big Gladys and … oh, I’ve forgotten the Scottish name of her other character, which she played while fighting cases of pink eye and the flu … aren’t available online. I wish I could share them because they are hilarious and fun and dammit, I had to wait nearly six years to see them so there’s no chance of me finding them online to share. You’ll just have to take my word.

Gossip. Giggle. Eat. Repeat.

Tuesday, I took Sally to The Fly Trap for her first-ever American diner experience. I consider myself an expert on diner food, and this place was good enough to merit a second visit. I wanted to try the green eggs and ham, and replace my entire bloodstream with their killer coffee.

I also wanted to see Sal have her first real American cheeseburger while sitting at a real diner counter.

No utensils! Eaten like a true American!

As soon as Sally went the restroom, the hostess scurried over to me before the bathroom door was all the way closed. “I know she gets this all the time so I didn’t want to say it to her, but I just love hearing her talk!” Trust me, we all do. British accent + actor = aural bliss. I told the hostess that Sally would love to have the compliment, but she didn’t come back.

With just a few hours left of my visit, we headed to downtown Detroit to meet Tiffy, her son, and a few Coney Island hot dogs. Because we hadn’t completely eaten the entire city of Detroit. I’m a big fan of Zen navigation, and I knew Woodward Avenue cuts a path from the ‘burbs into downtown. I had my eye out for The Magic Stick, but missed it because I forgot it was a part of The Majestic complex. Next time.

While making the drive into downtown, our conversation once again turned to race, economy and the state of cities like Detroit and St. Louis compared to London. She asked how the neighborhood we were in ranked. I looked around – while not prosperous, it seemed vital. Lots of open businesses, including quite a few that looked new. A fairly high amount of traffic, both car and foot. While it wasn’t exactly the best neighborhood, I said that I didn’t think it was too bad, and it seemed to be thriving and not destitute and oh look there’s a PANTLESS MAN IN FRONT OF THE KFC!

Unfortunately that last part didn’t come out as I wrote it because when one’s driving down Woodward Avenue in traffic and there’s a pantless man in front of the KFC, one would consider oneself lucky to be able to at least point and scream, “Penis!” to alert others.

Right there, in front of the KFC with all of Woodward Avenue’s traffic, there was a man changing his pants.

He was going commando.

I saw his junk, and immediately regretted not getting the collusion insurance on my rental car because I’ve hit things with cars for reasons not nearly as exciting as seeing a penis in front of a KFC on a major city street.

We followed that wiener sighting with another, this time of the Coney Island variety at Lafayette Coney Island. Unlike the one at KFC, which might have been of that new Chipotle Crunch variety, these Coneys had snappy natural casings (I didn’t get a good enough look at the one at KFC to note the casing condition.) and was smothered in chili, onions and cheese. Pure delight.

After Lafayette, Sally and I were both declared to be 100% American meat product by the USDA. Vegetarians, I apologize.

We ended the day with drinks at Starbucks with Tiffy before I passed out hugs, drove to the airport, relinquished my cute little black bunny, and proceeded to wait and wait and wait for my delayed flight because I have never, not once had a flight out of Detroit that was on time. But at least I remembered to not wear barrettes this time.

Do I miss Sal? You better believe it. But as always, I love how we can go a year or two without seeing each other and then get together under completely different circumstances and pick up where we left off.